Part of the analysis includes tooling, qualification, and warranty savings cost.Wouldn't a redesign just add to the cost of the warranty repair?
The dealer still has to do the repair - and be compensated by the manufacturer - who now also has to design and make a new part, stock it, educate mechanics, and scrap all the old ones.
Established companies can probably survive that expense better than small ones.
So it sort of comes back to the question of what is a warranty worth....
Warranties from different brands may not be equal value even if they do cover the same things.
I did design engineering for awhile (20 years) before going into another branch of engineering. We always designed something the best we could - and then sometimes had to battle over cost.
In my opinion, the whole concept of "designed obsolescence" is a folk tale. Maybe it started as speculation or a PhD project by some university economics or engineering department somewhere.
Planned obsolescence sounds good enough to be true - and maybe some where it is - but reality in manufacturing is that designing something to last a certain amount of repetitions then fail isl just about impossible.
It's hard enough designing it to last. Trying to hit a target of designed obsolescence would be incredibly expensive. Consider the testing time involved in each design iteration.... no way.
Not sure how it would relate to warranties, though.
rScotty
What products have you experienced this with?In my manufacturing experience "designed obsolescence" is definitely a real phenomenon.
What products have you experienced this with?